


In Defense of Rain

by Jay Tryfanstone (tryfanstone)



Category: A Song for Summer - Eva Ibbotson, Ibbotson Eva - works
Genre: Almost post-canon, Drizzle - Freeform, F/M, Gen, Lake District, Mist, Yuletide 2017, Yuletide Treat, downpour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 04:24:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13069083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tryfanstone/pseuds/Jay%20Tryfanstone
Summary: "What is your house like?""Wet.""Wetter than other houses?"It could not be easy, Ellen thought, to live in a red wet house, in the Lake District, in Borrowdale, which had the highest rainfall in England...





	In Defense of Rain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [redbelles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redbelles/gifts).



"Look," Papa said, and there above the mist Lucas could see the tops of hills, just the tops, some of them rounded and some of them pointed, and one of them so fantastically shaped it looked exactly like a castle. "They're not as tall as the mountains we'll see in Austria," Papa said, "But they're much older."

"Hundreds of thousands of years," said Lucas. 

"Older than that, even," said Papa, and then, heroically averting his eyes from the dining room table where breakfast had been some kind of sad grey mush and cold toast that behaved like soggy cardboard, he added with unlikely optimism, "I think the rain's easing up."

Through the pointed windows of the dining room, tall enough to reveal the tops of the hills and low enough to send an icy draught swirling around their ankles, they could see the first few feet of a slate patio in dire need of weeding, and little else. The world outside was white, as if this house sailed on its own little island through fog, and entrancingly archaic, for the windows were filled with diamond-paned glass, the leading between the panes so old every one tilted in a different direction and revealed a different shade of white. 

From the head of the table Uncle Kendrick grunted in a sort of non-committal tone, without glancing up. He was eating the horrible toast with a dreadful sort of industry, as if he didn't care at all what went into his mouth. 

"The lake is beautiful when the sun's out," said Mother, with the kind of staunch brightness she produced in dire circumstances, like their airplane nearly running out of fuel off the English coast and having to land at the smallest airport in the world, which had happened, yesterday. She was feeding his sister some kind of mush that came out of a preserving jar, and although Lucas was long past baby food, he was aware of a moment's envy that he was far too old now for pureed apple strudel or creamed corn. 

"If Tamara's not feeling well," said Mother, looking at Uncle Kendrick. "Shall I see about lunch? She won't think I'm imposing?"

Papa snorted. Uncle Kendrick, though, brightened. "Oh, would you?" he said gratefully, and Lucas could see in his face a trace of the kind of soppiness most men seemed to succumb to around his mother. It wasn't that Lucas didn't sympathise, it was just...predictable.

"I'm sure I can find something," said Mother firmly, which meant even if there were three potatoes and some flour in the pantry there would be pancakes, or rosti, or...Lucas' mouth was watering already. 

"The car's due at lunchtime," Papa said, even more hopefully, and then a _monster_ sauntered past the window. It had four legs and a nose, and fur so long it hung down in dripping ringlets. It had fantastically twisted horns and yellow eyes with slitted black pupils, as wicked and predatory as a Chinese dragon. Lucas could feel his mouth drop open. He had never seen anything like it. They could be on a...on the Galapagos Islands. In the mist, they could be _anywhere_.

"I won't take long, darling," said Mother, eyeing the dust on the dining room table and the unironed napkins. 

Lucas was on the edge of his seat. "Papa, can I get down?" he said urgently. A moment or two more and the monster would be out of sight. At home, he had to wait for everyone to finish eating before he could leave the table, and Uncle Kendrick was still grimly munching, but Papa just glanced at him and said, of course, and Lucas was pressing his nose against the cold window in _seconds_. The monster had cloven hooves and a dish-cloth whisk of a tail. It was chewing something, just like Uncle Kendrick. 

Uncle Kendrick said, "There should be some rods in the gun room, Altenberg, if you wanted to take the lad fishing."

Papa didn't fish. He didn't hunt, either, although he always managed to hit the targets at the spring fair. Mother said he'd seen enough blood in the war.

She said, "You could take Lucas, and get some eggs from the farm." 

Papa laughed. He leaned across the table and kissed Mother quickly, and said, "We know when we're not wanted."

Papa said Mother was an artist. Papa said, Mother's baking was just as important as him or Uncle Isaac making music, and it tasted better, too. And he said, sometimes, Lucas, people need to be alone with their art, which was as true of Papa writing music as Mother baking, and one day it would be true for Lucas too. Sometimes he wanted to be a botanist, sailing up the Amazon surrounded by butterflies and monkeys and crocodiles, but sometimes he thought he wanted to be a physicist, with all the wonders of the stars in laid out in front of him like a Beethoven symphony. There was plenty of time for him to make up his mind, though. 

So Papa and Leon wrapped themselves in big yellow rubbery waterproofs, and pulled on wellingtons - Leon had to wear two pairs of socks with his - and opened the door to Outside.

Outside was wet. Outside was so wet everything was covered with water, the gravel of the driveway puddled and the red tiles and red bricks of the stables opposite streaming, the grass sodden and the eaves of the little gabled porch dripping from every carved gingerbread curlicue. And it was still raining. The sky was heavy with it, and the air was so damp Lucas' nose felt as if it was running, although it wasn't. 

Papa tugged his hood a little higher, and said, "Once more into the breach, dear Lucas," and ducked into the rain. When Lucas followed, he felt as if he was being pelted all over. He could feel the raindrops landing on his back and his shoulders, and if he turned his head a little, on his nose, as if the rain was coming at him sideways. But there was a softness to it in a way that was different from home, and the air smelt of green and growing things. Lucas sniffed, and got water up his nose, and had to mop himself up with Papa's handkerchief, and then they set off down the driveway. The mist was so thick they couldn't see the gate at the end, nor the little bridge they had driven over last night, but Papa always knew where he was going. 

And the world was full of wonderful new things. Beyond the house there were fields, where a small and very elderly Welsh pony could have been a knight's charger, looming out of the mist with the droplets of rain on its mane gleaming like armour. Long-haired sheep with black faces and extraordinary curled horns strode the wet grass as if they were warriors of the Steppes, un-numbered and mysterious and enchanting. 

The lane itself was enclosed between stone walls, and every stone looked as if there was no other possible place in the world where it belonged. The footings of the walls were all tall grasses and wildflowers and tiny green frogs and earthworms, solemn and elegant and self-absorbed. There were fat black slugs and fat orange slugs with little frilled edges, and a big brown beetle with antlers like a miniature moose... 

Lucas spent so long looking at his feet that when he looked up, the rain had stopped and he hadn't noticed. The mist was a fluffy white rather than a leaden white, as if the sun was trying to see through it, and they were very nearly at the farm. There was a farmer, who was square all over and weather-beaten like a winter apple, so her face was red-cheeked and wrinkled all over when she smiled. Papa handed over some English coins, and carefully wrapped six speckled brown eggs in his scarf and put them in the pocket of his waterproof. Luckily, the pockets were very big, big enough for maps and compasses and slices of cake. "We'll walk up some hills in Austria," Papa promised. "Where it's always sunny. Or snowing."

But it was sunny walking back over the bridge, a odd and fragile kind of sunshine slanted through the cloud, warm enough that the track seemed to steam a little and bright enough that the water refracted miniature rainbows. Every tiny stem of the plush pads of moss on the dry stone wall carried its own diamond raindrop, and the crawling lace of the patches of lichen, yellows and oranges and green in fractals spilling over the stone, was all alive with colour. The stones themselves were every shade of blue and grey and black, and some of them were veined with sparkling white crystals that were as smooth as snow in the river-worn rocks and sharp as knives where the same rock had been split into slabs. "Quartz," said Papa. "And this is iron pyrite, and this is copper." Rain had brought out the colours in the rock. Iron was a banner of red and gold, but copper was an unexpected and startlingly vivid green, like the stones in an Egyptian headdress. 

"And look," said Papa, leaning over the paraphet of the bridge.

Lucas did. The river was implacably about its own business, bronze-dark and smooth, so that he could only see how fast it was running by the leaves caught up in the current. There were oak leaves, and grasses in handfuls with occasional buttercups, and cheerful curly leaves like caterpillers, all of them swept downstream towards the lake. But at the sides of the river there were boulders and tree roots where the water hesitated, spun itself in circles, and slid into quiet eddies. And in one of the eddies there was a fish, so well camoflaged the cigar-shape of it was only a shadow, until it moved and suddenly every scale on its belly flashed silver and every scale on its back, gold. 

When they stood and looked, there were other creatures under the bridge. There were little dark water-snails, and speckled frogs, and something that sent the water rippling in great concentric circles, overlapping and refracting, one great spreading circle, and then another...

"It's raining again," said Lucas, who had put his hood back the better to see, and had consequently allowed a great fat raindrop to splatter onto the back of his neck and trickle down under his jumper.

Papa was standing very still, but he smiled at Lucas, and they splashed hand in hand back up the driveway. The mist was closing in again, grey and lowering, but Lucas knew that there were wonders underneath it, and perhaps when they got back to the house his sister would be awake enough to be bundled into several coats and taken out to see the world. He had every intention of enquiring, but when they got back to the great red bulk of the house - a citadel, a fortress, a castle - there was the most magical growth of mushrooms sprouting by the kitchen stoop...

"Lucas?"

"Mama," said Lucas, surprised. His mother was taking off her apron, and there was a smudge of flour on her nose. She would have lunch in hand by now, he knew, and was suddenly very glad that she was his own particular mother. "Mama, look."

The toadstalls were duly admired, but after a moment of two Lucas realised his mother was looking at Papa. He had that look on his face, as if he was listening to something the rest of them could not hear. Lucas titled his head on one side, and he heard - he head the splatter of rain on the hood of his own yellow so'wester, and the hard pitter-patter of it on the slate of the patio. The rush of it through the drainpipes was soft and contained, but the stream that ran alongside the driveway was a joyful carnival of tumbled rocks and miniature waterfalls, busy and splashing and merry, while the river under the bridge was a quiet and ruthless thunder. Even the rain that fell into the water had its own sound, a quiet plink where it fell into puddles, but a splishing firework as it hit the tumbling stream. The droplets that fell from the tree leaves were thick and solid, but the ones that gleamed on the pony's coat were as tiny as grains of flour, and Lucas thought he could hear the sound of them in Papa's head already, the tinkling run of a harpsichord... His own wellingtons made an immensely satisfying splash when he jumped into one of the puddles. 

Mother was laughing at them from the doorway. 

"Ellen," said Papa. "Ellen, look." He held out his hands at the wet world. "We can get towels in a moment," he said, for Papa knew mother very well. "Come out. Dance with me!"

Mother went to him without even putting on a coat. She was wearing her green jacket, the one with embroidery on the sleeves, and her hair was not as neat as it usually was, so that she looked as enchanted as the landscape. Papa must have thought so too, for when he smiled - one day, Lucas thought, he would find a friend he could smile with the way Papa smiled with Mother. They folded into each other, and then, in silence, in the rain, they were dancing. 

Perhaps there was soup, and even better, biscuits. Where his mother was, there were often miracles. Lucas dragged off his wellingtons, and, trailing his waterproof, went in search of the kitchen.


End file.
